


Remarkable Woman, Flammable.

by Sternenstaub



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Adventure, Family, chosen family, very slow updates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 18:40:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13596033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sternenstaub/pseuds/Sternenstaub
Summary: The Tale of Bellanaris and Ma´Serannas Surana and how the mages fared and struggled after the demons overtook the circle of Kinloch Hold





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A big thanks to @epitome for beta-ing the first chapter!

Everything was chaos: the Circle had fallen but nobody wanted to acknowledge it yet. The Templars had fled and locked everyone inside. Children, the elderly, their most valued enchanters. Everyone was locked in with demons, abominations, and the knowledge that they would die at their claws or at the templar's swords once the Right of Annulment was invoked. 

Sera was furious - how could they just abandon everyone?! This was their home, many didn´t know another life and now they were left to die. Some guardians those templars were. She scoffed, seeing Bella hoard all the smaller children, the rest of their little family, the ones who had not been tempted, the few who could escape sloth and fire and overeager templars that hacked first and asked questions later. She gagged a bit, thinking back to the severed arm she had stepped on earlier: a small arm, unblemished but for the fact that it was no longer attached to the body a few feet away, a child's arm.

 

It was chaos all around. The elderly mage, Wynne, was healing everyone Bella couldn´t. Mana was not an unlimited source after all, and most lyrium potions had been shattered already. The templars did not want any survivors. Sera tried to imagine killing the very people you had spent the last 5 years together with, the people who sometimes left you cookies and little knitted mittens in winter - okay, only Bella did that, but everyone knew she was crushing on Cullen and got an unlimited yarn supply for her little courtesies. 

A yarn supply she knew how to use, Sera thought, crushing her own shawls to her chest. The shawls that showed they were family. The shawl everyone got in their favourite colour after some time. It meant they would always recognize each other, in the real world, the Fade and beyond. The brightly coloured wool in her hands calmed her down a bit and she joined the circle the young mages formed around the two healers. While Wynne had always been too rule abiding for her tastes, Bella was a mage she had learned to love. 

 

When Sera first came to the Circle, she felt that she would never belong. Even the name they called her was not her own: everyone called her Ma´Seranna, like it was a real name her parents gave her and not just the last thing they said to the templars when they took the traumatized 10 year old girl who had accidentally set her bed aflame. As if it wasn't a cry of relief from the people who were supposed to love her but had instead betrayed her, who feared her abilities. When she was too terrified to speak or eat, Bella was the one who slipped her a cookie at night, who squeezed her shoulder for a second, so fast that it might have been her imagination but still comforted her more than any overbearing attention ever could. And without her noticing it, they became close enough to consider the other family.

 

With a bang the door that seperated everyone from freedom, opened and a mage Sera never would have imagined to see again stood in its doorway. Well, two mages to be exact. Her friends and brothers in mischief stood there, dirty and exhausted but with a look on their faces that screamed that they would save their home.

She did not dare approach them, didn't think they even saw her between all the scared faces before Wynne demanded their attention. 

And who was that black haired mage advocating for them all to be killed off? How rude, she didn't even know her!

They were led outside like cattle; even the faces of the Templars who sometimes cracked a smile but always at the very least treated them like fellow people, were grim and cold, not an ounce of warmth or compassion in there. One shoved a small elven child to the ground, stepping on his leg and continuing onward as if nothing had happened. Sera walked behind him and was just an inch away from setting him and every single templar in the vicinity on fire. 

 

Camping outside, they waited. For what? Nobody knew. Maybe for the tower to burn down, maybe for the right of Annulment to be executed after all, maybe for freedom. 

Sera´s talents were useful for once: now that she wasn't confined between too small walls and easily burning fabrics, she could make the biggest campfires - and if she hurled a fireball a bit too close to one templar or another, it totally wasn't on purpose.

The first few fires went right out again: being only fueled by magic and not any logging skill didn't work after all. Not even if the magic was fueled by rage. Gathering a few small leaves and smaller branches, they tried building a fire like they had seen in some adventure books that included pictures of the hero´s travels. Turned out, logs did not magically adhere to each other and burn in a happy fire to sit around and sing songs. Turned out wood did not want to burn at all when it was wet. And they were next to a frigging lake, everything was wet. Finally, Sera lost her patience and tore a few pages out of a book she had still in her pouch. And if it was her homework that now burned happily, that was totally accidental. But the fire burned. 

Looking into the flames with her pale yellow eyes, she pondered their next movements. Her hair caught fire at the tips as she sat too close but she didn't even bother to put it out. Having one strand or another smoke or smell freshly burnt wasn´t unusual for her after all and she currently had more important concerns. There were problems to solve and people to avenge. And most of all, a tower to burn down.

The camp was chaos. A horde of mages who had barely been allowed outside were suddenly expected to sleep under the open sky. The small ones loved it, but only until they felt cold and huddled closer to the fire. When the hunger set in, they liked it even less. The older ones were afraid, confused and mourned their brethren.

 

Sera watched most of them from afar, waiting for her brothers to emerge again, fearing the worst but also desperately wanting to be part of the fight, she had always been the best when it came to setting things on fire. And that stupid tower over there seriously needed some burning down. 

It wasn't because they hurt her kin, no, she would never go for blood over that. Who would hurt someone that maimed, killed and stepped on your family and then abandoned them, after all? She smirked. Nobody noticed how Bella, at her back, got goosebumps, knowing her little spitfire way too well.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit Backstory for them both

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I´ll switch POV between my two chars now and then.

Bellanaris POV

Today was a special day. Bella had been preparing for it for weeks. Hiding in dark corners and slipped away when no one was looking, not easy in small round rooms were everyone was always watching, waiting for something interesting to happen, waiting for gossip to start or spread. Fear was a high motivator within the circle but utter boredom was even more so.   
You could only learn so much and reading at night was not allowed. The Grand Enchanter feared the books would catch fire. The few novels that had been hidden in the shelves were all known by heart by every mage and noone wanted to talk AGAIN about why Siegrid and Brunhilde couldn´t stay together in the end.

In this environment mages learned how to move soundless and unseen. Not only so they wouldn´t run into the arms of one of the “less nice” templars but also so they could have some privacy or at least imagine they did. 

But Bella didn´t want privacy, she didn´t even want to sneak out and watch the templar, who was way too young for her, train or stammer. She was always delighted she could make him blush so much, he even fell over his own feet one time and after she hid some crocheted gloves in a dark wine red colour in the corner he usually stood guard at? He couldn´t look into her eyes for days, but she could always see the gloves stored in his pocket, a small red spot looking out of his armor.

She didn´t giggle, even if she wanted to, and continued her way. The templars knew where she was but the mages were not supposed to. Or more accurately, one small mage was not supposed to. The small child, a girl barely eleven, had finally started talking with the others a few weeks ago after months of utter silence. She was a bit of a spitfire, Bella couldn´t help but smile thinking about her, seeing so much energy and life in such a small being. Ears pointed and perked at the next prank and always eyes lightning up if she thought she could get away with a small “accidental” fire that ate her homework. The silent, scared and hurt child had finally emerged her shell and was now alive. Not all mages were and Bella delighted in seeing her every day, even if she had to extinguish a lot more fires than before. Good thing ice magic had always been her strong point.

Caught in her musings, she had finally reached the small storage room where her yarn was neatly organized in boxes. The room that never got empty, since a few templars and mages of noble origin saw her shawls and supplied her with the necessary ingredients to make life a little bit more bearable in these cold walls. She was by far not the only one to make little somethings of cloth and wool, but somehow her shawls, crafted for each individual in their favourite colours, had hit a cord and people wanted her to continue. It also helped that they apparently emerged from the shadows, you went to bed at night and when you woke up the next morning a shawl was there. And it was not any shawl, it meant you belonged, it meant you had a family even if yours had discarded you, it meant home. 

Not all mages had one, some denied the gift, others thought it would be a bad idea to get close to the younglings before their harrowing, for mostly children between 7 and 16 received this offer of friendship and unconditional love, Bella thought especially the kids needed this kind of safety and belonging. And tonight? Tonight she would give a shawl to Ma´Serannas, the child who hated her name with a passion but refused to give another. The child who had found friends by almost burning down half the books about spirit healing, when nobody knew why she had even been in that part of the library. The little spitfire that had slowly opened up and was now alive again. And if deciding to live, to participate and show the world you don't care what it throws at you, you´re stronger, wasn't calling for a gift, Bella didn´t know what did.

With a hidden smile, she stored the bright orange and purple shawl under her robes and sneaked back, putting it next to the child´s pillow, having to suppress a laugh when even at night Sera, as she liked to call her, smelled of burned hair. That girl really was bad at containing her inner fire.

**Author's Note:**

> updates will be slow and not regular. be warned ^^
> 
> If anyone wants to know what Ma´Sera looks like  
> http://sternenstaub28.tumblr.com/post/170474694360/feeshies-dragon-age-ko-fi-commission-closed


End file.
